Sunday, June 10, 2018

June 10 #OnThisDay in #Australian #History

1770 - Jimmy Cook was bobbing about in his boat when the Endeavour found the Great Barrier Reef the hard way.

1770 - Jim Cook waxed lyrical about the inlet he knighted as Trinity Bay...
"The shore between Cape Grafton and Cape Tribulation forms a large but not very deep bay which I named Trinity Bay after the day – Trinity Sunday – on which it was discovered."
Cook hauled his tub, the HM Bark Endeavour into Mission Bay, at the southern end of Trinity inlet, and went ashore for a short time with Sir Joseph Banks near the present site of the Yarrabah Aboriginal community.

1812 - The ship Campbell Macquarie had a nasty mischief on Macquarie Island and fell to bits.

1817 - Lachlan, of the Gov Macquarie flavour, was aghast at the shocking state of the Sydney-Parramatta road after a deluge or 3 washed it into a series of pot holes so he sashayed over to the Strong Work Gangs, selected 3 of the same and set them forth to whip the roads into a decent shape.

1824 - Governor Brisbane requested of the Colonial Secretary, Bathurst, that a troop of colonial cavalry be raised ‘not only with a view of keeping the Aborigines in check against whom Infantry have no chance of success, but also for the general Police of the Country’. The strength of the troop was to be 29 men and three officers.55 This was the foundation of the Mounted Police.

1834 - In April 1834 Aboriginal resistance leader, Calyute, also known as Kalyute, Galyute or Wongir, had led a raid on a flour mill near Perth; the raiders were captured by troopers during which Calyute was bayoneted and the others wounded by gunfire. They were taken to Perth where, despite their injuries, they were flogged in the main street, Calyute receiving sixty lashes. As the raiders' ringleader, he was confined at Fremantle prison until this day.

1835 – Australia's first political party, the Australian Patriotic Party, was founded.

1838 - A group of white settlers murdered 28 Aboriginal men, women and children near Myall Creek Station in northern New South Wales, near Bingara. Seven of the killers were tried and hanged.

1854 - Bushranger Mad Dan Morgan, although not yet known by this moniker as he was waltzing about the shop as jockey "John Smith:, was sentenced to twelve years hard labour for highway robbery at Castlemaine.

1867 - All the 'Rat gossip on hand, Gents!Today saw the Very First Ever issue of the celebrated fish wrapper the Ballarat Courier.

1867 - Poet Adam Lindsay Gordon's first volume of poetry, Ashtaroth, was first published for the great unwashed masses who apparently didn't appreciate it.

1876 - Kenneth Brown was hanged at Perth Gaol for the murder of his wife Mary Ann at Geraldton.

1878 - Dobbin-drawn trams began clip-clopping through the streets of Adelaide, with many a happy gardener along the routes.

1879 - Alfred, Indigenous. Hanged at Mudgee for the rape of Jane Dowd at Three Mile Flat, near Wellington.

1880 - Macpherson Roberston, that clever chocolately chap who founded the MacRobertson Confectionary Company which gave the world Freddo Frogs, began cooking up the goodies in a Fitzroy bathroom.

1885 - Daisy May Bates, her what did welfare work with Aboriginals, got herself hitched to her THIRD hubby (Ernest Baglehole) today, a mere 13 months after marrying her first (Breaker Morant) and a piddly 4 months after celebrating wedded bliss with her second (Jack Bates).
Needless to say Dear Daisy didn't bother with that divorce malarky.

1886 The Cairns Post reported today:
'George Lawson (Yorkey) a beche-de-mer fisherman at Green Island reported to Mr. R. T. Hartley yesterday the loss of a man and his wife from the island. They started last Thursday in a boat with the intention of visiting the wreck of the Upolu and have not returned since, although it was understood they would return the same day. The weather during the time was fine and he (George Lawson) had made search for them but is unable to account for their absence. The pilot cutter will be despatched to search for the missing couple.'
This chap was Yorkey of Yorkeys Knob fame.
If you don't know of Yorkeys Knob then you haven't lived.

1886 - Mount Tarawera blew it's top in New Zealand, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people and the total destruction of the "Eighth Wonder of The World", the stunningly beautiful Pink and White Terraces.

1893 - Patrick Hannan,Thomas Flanagan and Dan O'Shea found gold near the surface of the dry red soil on a track east of Coolgardie; working in secret, each man dug up the equivalent of several years wages in the space of a week.

1912 - George David Silva was hanged at Boggo Road Gaol for the murder of seventeen-year-old Maud Ching at Alligator Creek, near Hay Point. On the same occasion he also murdered Maud's younger siblings Teddy, Dolly, Hugh and Winnie, and their mother Agnes.

1916 – A large majority approved a referendum in New South Wales deciding hotels should close at six o'clock for the duration of the war and six months thereafter; early closing came into force in NSW from 21 July lasting until 1955.

1960 – The Abel Tasman crashed into the sea between Hay Point and Baker's Creek. at Mackay, Queensland , killing 29 persons, the largest air disaster in Australian history. This crash was the impetus in the development of the "Black Box" Flight Recorder used on all aircraft these days.

1964 - The Mop Tops touched down; for those of you too young to know WTF I;m waffling about The Beatles rocked up in Australia from Hong Kong. After an unscheduled fuel stop in Darwin (where 400 fans were still on hand to greet them) The Beatles flew on to Sydney. They arrived in the middle of a heavy downpour, but were required to appear in an open-top truck in the pouring rain to greet fans.
Something to do with hysterical, screaming yoof.

1975 - The driver of B 69 a Long Island Up goods train, which had been hauling eight wagons of steel from Lysaught's steel mill at Hastings lost control approaching Frankston colliding with a Silver Hitachi train at the platform which was destroyed.

2000 - The Myall Creek Memorial was erected; it has seven plaques dedicated to the lives and the experiences of the Wirrayararaay people who were a tribal clan of the Kamilaroi nation.
"In memory of the Wirrayararaay people who were murdered on the slopes of this ridge in an unprovoked but premeditated act in the late afternoon of 10 June 1838.
Erected on 10 June 2000 by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in an act of reconciliation and in acknowledgement of the truth of our shared history
We remember them — Ngiyani winagay ganunga."

2008 - Japan’s Toyota said it will start making the Camry hybrid in Australia and Thailand as part of its efforts to step up production of "green" cars around the world.

2017 - The Great Train Race
Two steam trains departed simultaneously from Central Station (Platforms 1 & 2) at 9.30am for a race through Sydney’s inner western suburbs to Strathfield and returned during the Heritage Transport Expo.

4 comments:

"...over to the Strong Work Gangs, selected 3 of the same and set them forth to whip the roads into a decent shape."

Were they prisoners who had to work or is that just what they called the workers? We have prison crews here in the USA who do road work even now. It is disturbing to see a guard standing with them, armed. I think it is paid work and they choose to do it, not forced. But not sure about that.

Curious me looked it up and discovered George David Silva has his own Wikipedia entry. As suspected he got a bit annoyed when Maud said 'take your dirty hands off me' and took it out on the rest of the family!